the futurist cinema



“The book, a wholly passéist means of preserving and communicating thought, has for a long time been fated to disappear like cathedrals, towers, crenellated walls, museums, and the pacifist ideal. The book, static companion of the sedentary, the nostalgic, the neutralist, cannot entertain or exalt the new Futurist generations intoxicated with revolutionary and bellicose dynamism…

… The Futurist cinema, which we are preparing, a joyful deformation of the universe, an alogical, fleeting synthesis of life in the world, will become the best school for boys: a school of joy, of speed, of force, of courage, and heroism. The Futurist cinema will sharpen, develop the sensibility, will quicken the creative imagination, will give the intelligence a prodigious sense of simultaneity and omnipresence. The Futurist cinema will thus cooperate in the general renewal, taking the place of the literary review (always pedantic) and the drama (always predictable), and killing the book (always tedious and oppressive). The necessities of propaganda will force us to publish a book once in a while. But we prefer to express ourselves through the cinema, through great tables of words-in-freedom and mobile illuminated signs”.

The Futurist Cinema (1916)
by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti et al.


It was probably inevitable that the Futurists would eventually turn their attention to the arts of photography and the cinema despite their (especially Umberto Boccioni's) antagonistic stance towards the former. The cinema was not only relatively new and untouched by a long and deadening tradition but it also offered dramatic potential for exploring movement, speed and dynamism.

As early as 1910, the brothers Arnoldo Ginna and Bruno Corra had made interesting experiments in abstract cinema and their avant-garde approach had much influence on later Futurist cinematic developments. All of these early film experiments are now lost, like most other avant-garde film experiments of this period.

In 1912 Corra published his manifesto Abstract Cinema - Chromatic Music in which he described his work with his brother in establishing a link between sound and colour and investigated how the colour spectrum could be applied to the musical scale. “Consequently we selected four equally distanced gradations in each colour. We had four reds chosen at equal distances in the spectrum, four greens, four violets, etc. In this way we managed to extend the seven colours in four octaves. After the violet of the first octave came the red of the second, and so on. To translate all this into practice we naturally used a series of twenty-eight coloured electric light bulbs, corresponding to twenty-eight keys. Each bulb was fitted with an oblong reflector: the first experiments were done with direct light, and in the subsequent ones a sheet of ground glass was placed in front of the light bulb. The keyboard was exactly like that of a piano (but was less extensive). When an octave was played, for example, the two colours were mingled, as are two sounds on the piano”.

The resultant machine was christened the pianoforte cromatico, or chromatic piano. Some ‘sonatas of colour’ were composed by translating a Venetian barcarolle by Mendelssohn, a rondo by Chopin and a Mozart sonata. But after three months Ginna and Corra abandoned this series of experiments due partially to its transitoriness but also because the results were unsatisfactory due to either their light source being inefficient or, if they used more powerful bulbs, their colours were being burnt out and had to be frequently re-coloured.

Their thoughts then turned to using the cinema (because of its permanence and the strength of its light source) for integrating colour and music and they predicted excellent results. Corra describes their experiments in detail in his manifesto, including how they used an all-white room and even suggested that “once chromatic music is established, be it our works or those of others, a fashion will follow encouraging the well-dressed spectator to go to the theatre of colour dressed in white.”

The fruits of these experiments, in which they applied colour directly to unexposed filmstock, were four very short films: the first, Accordo di colore (An Agreement of Colour) was based on a painting by Segantini. The second, Studio di effetti tra quattro colori (Study of the Effects Between Four Colours) was based in the interaction of complementary colours - red and green, blue and yellow. The third was a translation and reduction of Canto di Primavera (The Spring Song) by Mendelssohn and the fourth was a “translation in colours” of Mallarmé’s poem Les Fleurs (The Flowers). None of the films were shown publicly and none survive.

In the same period Corra and Ginna made two other films that were both over two hundred metres long - screening for about ten minutes. The first was entitled L’arcobaleno (The Rainbow). “The colours of the rainbow constitute the dominant theme, which appears occasionally in different forms and with ever-increasing intensity until it finally explodes with dazzling violence. The screen is initially grey, then in this grey background there gradually appears a very slight agitation of radiant tremors that seem to rise out of the grey depths, like bubbles in a spring, and when they reach the surface they explode and disappear. The entire symphony is based on this effect of contrast between the cloudy grey of the background and the rainbow, and the struggle between them. The struggle increases, the spectrum, suffocated beneath the ever blacker vortices which roll from background to foreground, manages to free itself, flashes, then disappears again to reappear more intensely close to the frame. Finally, in an unexpected dusty disintegration, the grey crumbles and the spectrum triumphs in a whirling of Catherine-wheels which disappear in their turn, buried under an avalanche of colours.” 

The second film was called La danza (The Dance) with predominant colours of “carmine, violet and yellow, which are continually united, separated and hurled upwards in an agile pirouetting of spinning tops.” Again, neither film was shown publicly and neither survives today.

     

Historically, the honour of being the first Futurist avant-garde film belongs to Drama v Kabare Futuristov No 13 (Drama of the Futurist Cabaret No 13).

It was filmed in 1913 (or, possibly, 1914) by Vladimir Kasyanov and directed by the Moscow Futurists Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov. They also both acted in the film with Vladimir Mayakovsky and the Burliak brothers, David and Nikolai.

The film declared to be a cinematic record of the Russian Futurists everyday behaviour as they roamed the Moscow streets with symbols or flowers painted on their faces. The still photograph from the film shows Larionov and the bare-breasted Goncharova with painted faces. At 431 metres long, the film lasted about 20 minutes and was classified as a "short". 

      

A year or two later the Russian Futurists made a second film called I Want To Be A Futurist with Mayakovsky in the lead supported by the clown and acrobat from the State Circus, Lazarenko (pictured left), who worked closely with the Futurists in several productions.

No further details are known.


In 1914 Marcel Fabre created the short film Amor Pedestre (Love Afoot, or, Pedestrian Love) which is the only record of Futurist reductionist performance - the film is performed entirely by the actors' feet. (See the series of nine stills from the film at right - you won't find these in any books!). The whole film is just over two minutes long and is an exquisite essay in modern stylistic experiment.
     



Scene from Amor Pedestre

While, strictly speaking, Fabre was not a Futurist, the style of the film was totally Futurist in feeling and probably had a great influence on not only other Futurist films but possibly the Futurist theatre - Marinetti's Le basi (Feet, 1915), was a sintesi that consisted of only the lower legs and feet of performers and objects. Whether or not Marinetti had seen Fabre's film is open to conjecture but the similarity, as seen below, is remarkable.


Scene from Marinetti's sintesi "Le basi" of 1915

The plot of Amor pedestre is, briefly, - a woman drops her purse in street, a man picks it up and hands it to her. She walks off, he follows. She gets onto a tram, he takes seat next to her - they play footsie. Next scene - she gets a love note from him but her husband (a soldier) finds it. The soldier and the man meet, the husband challenges the man to a duel. The man quakes and collapses into a chair. Next scene - they meet on the field of honour and duel with swords - the husband lunges, the man drops his sword (obviously wounded) and falls back into arms of his second. The husband walks up to him, pauses, then walks away, climbs into a car and drives off. The seconds help the man, then the woman runs up to him. He makes an immediate recovery and the pair slowly walk off the field together. Final scene - the man is on one knee, the woman is sitting on chair. They both get up, facing each other - her dress falls to the floor, she steps out of it and moves towards him. End.

In 1916 Anton Giulio Bragaglia directed three full-length (that is, over one hour's duration) films produced by the commercial film company Novissima Film; Thaïs, Il Perfido Incanto (The Wicked Enchantment) and Il Mio Cadavere (My Corpse) as well as a comic 'short' (less than an hour's duration) called Dramma in Olimpo (Drama in Olympus). The sets for Thaïs and Il Perfido Incanto were designed by Enrico Prampolini. All three of the full-length films used professional actors although the ballet dancer Lleana Leonidoff, who featured in Il Perfido Incanto, and the Russian actress Thaïs Galitzky, who featured in both Thaïs and Il Perfido Incanto, were not professional actresses. Augusto Bandini played the male lead in Thaïs

Thaïs, the first of Bragaglia's films, is possibly the only surviving full-length Futurist film with a copy allegedly preserved (although, alas, all but unseen) in the Cinémathèque Francaise. It was 1446 metres long, running for about 70 minutes and, according to Bragaglia's daughter, was an ironic love story with a tragic ending. It included surreal and abstract imagery "Geometric shapes were formed and dissolved by movement, steam rose from walls and mist disrupted perspective. The Mouth of Truth breathed out clouds of smoke. There were the shortest of captions, fragments of Baudelaire. Black and white alternated with dark blue or fiery orange toning". The six stills from the film shown here demonstrate Prampolini's amazing geometric set designs. The last two photographs show the final scene in the film where the scenery transforms and Thaïs is impaled upon it. Thaïs has been described as curious rather than successful, but it preceded French and German experiments of the same kind. 

Il Perfido Incanto (The Wicked Enchantment) was 1389 metres long (although some sources give 1,500 metres), running for about 70 (or 75) minutes. It was described in publicity of the time as romantic, melodramatic and old-fashioned. "It involves a sorcerer and fortune-teller, Atanor, who lives with his ward, Circe, in an enchanted palace in a large modern city. Circe, in her role as the Duchess of Tiana, falls in love with Mario Berry. In order not to lose Circe, who provides him with the private information upon which his reputation as a seer depends, Atanor kills Berry's wife. Later, after a bank robbery, Atanor threatens to kill Berry, too, if Circe does not give in to his desires. Berry arrives at the sorcerer's house just after Circe, having been raped by Atanor, his killed the satyr by driving a pin in his neck. Believing that she also killed his wife, Berry leaves, and Circe falls down overcome with madness." 

Despite its completely un-Futurist setting and storyline, Bragaglia described the film as "a very modern film" and it appears that in cinematic terms it was the most experimental of his films. He employed a range of trick photography and visual effects, such as the use of distorting mirrors (as was to be employed in Vita futurista) and various prisms and lenses, to give surreal effects and to bring his principles of photodynamism to the screen. It was perhaps these effects combined with, one imagines, stunning sets designed by Prampolini that made the film so "very modern".

With, apparently, nothing to do with Futurism in terms of style, content or ethos, Il Mio Cadavere (My Corpse) would appear to have been another typical cinematic melodrama of the period. Bragaglia's daughter described it as "expressive of changing states of psychic obsession" and the storyline, based on a Neapolitan novel, revolved around an evil baron with a fear of death and the consequent visions he suffered. It was originally 1380 metres long, again with a running time of about 70 minutes, but some of the more shocking scenes were cut by the censor. 

All three of Bragaglia's full-length films had a 'front-on' approach which, in simple terms, replicated the stage of the theatre on the cinema screen. Similarly, all three had plots that replicated, scene by scene, stories in the same way that a play does. The question of their 'modernity' therefore rests on the cinematic effects used and, with Thaïs and Il Perfido Incanto, Prampolini's visually stunning sets, yet the subject and structure of all three should probably preclude them from being seen as an avant-garde films in the strictest sense. The next Futurist film, however, is a different matter.

During 1916, the members of the Futurist group of Florence, based around the journal L’Italia Futurista, created what is probably the most famous of Futurist incursions into cinema history, and certainly the only group film made by the Italian Futurists, the film Vita futurista (Futurist Life). The film’s sequences were devised during a series of late evening discussions at the Hotel Baglioni, Florence, by seven of the nine members of L’Italia Futurista’s editorial board - Marinetti, Ginna, Corra, Settimelli, Mario Carli, Neri Nannetti and Lucio Venna - and Giacomo Balla. Bragaglia was not invited to take part. The resulting film, a summation of a flow of ideas, even sounds as if it was designed by committee being a series of unrelated sketches, with different scenes probably being the inspiration of particular individuals. For example it is easy to imagine the pugilistic Morning Gymnastics as being the brainchild of Marinetti while Balla possibly devised the proto-surreal sequence where he falls in love with a chair. 

The film was shot in Florence during the summer of 1916 and Arnaldo Ginna was the producer, director and camera operator using a hand-cranking Pathé camera. He later recalled that the biggest problem he encountered during the making of the film was getting the cast to take the project seriously. They, apparently, were prone to staying in bed most of the day and Ginna was often forced to round them up by frequent telephone calls and sending taxis to collect them. 

Originally there were three or four copies of the film, all of which are now believed lost. Ginna lent the last surviving copy to a friend and it was never returned. In its original form the film was 990 metres long but the Ministry of Interior censor ordered the final scene to be cut (of which more presently) reducing the film to a final length of about 800 metres - approximately 40 minutes screen time. The first showing of Vita Futurista was at the Niccolini Theatre, Florence on 28 January 1917 when it was presented with four sintesi by Settimelli and Corra and readings from a range of Futurist poets by Chiti and Settimelli. The audience received the film with a barrage of tomatoes thrown at the screen and apparently the film's reception in other cities was similar - in Bologna, said Ginna, they reacted by throwing pasta, in Naples they used oranges, while in Rome pieces of coal were thrown. 

The following is a synopsis of the sequences of the film. However, the sequence and, indeed, the content of the film are largely open to debate since all copies of the film are thought to be lost. Arnaldo Ginna, in 1965, recalled the film nearly fifty years after the event and it should be noted that his account differs substantially to Marinetti's synopsis which appears to be equally lacking. Following is Ginna's account of the film, followed by the synopsis of Marinetti.

Ginna described the film as having eight parts, not counting a final scene that was cut by the censors.

1. "Futurist Lunch" - The first scene takes place outside the restaurant in Piazzale Michelangelo, Florence and was supposed to represent Futurism attacking Passéism.      

An old gentleman with a long white beard (played by Lucio Venna - just visible in this still, sitting at the back, left of centre, and to the right of the two men sat at left) sits at a table outside the restaurant eating a bowl of soup, when some young Futurists began to noisily criticise him.  The old man represented the passéist establishment while the Futurists represented the dynamism of young Futurism. The Futurists were played by Giacomo Balla, Remo Chiti and Emilio Settimelli - seated at the table to the right in the still photo. Ginna recalled that an English tourist, witnessing the scene and not realising a film was being made (despite Venna's obviously false beard) harangued Marinetti and tried to intervene to protect the 'old' man from the Futurists. This event was, apparently, included in the final print of the film.

2. "The Sentimental Futurist" - A young Futurist, full of self-confidence, allows himself to become overwhelmed by sentimental love. What was actually filmed is not known but, according to Ginna, atmospheric mood was obtained by toning the film shades of light blue. Again according to Ginna, during the editing of this sequence he and Venna (who was assistant director) noticed that a part of the film had been damaged by numerous white spots caused by dust on the negative. Seeing the possibility of creating new depth of feeling by using 'special effects' he and Venna painstakingly coloured the individual dots red in order to increase the expression of the film.


     
3. "How a Futurist Sleeps". In a room two people sleep in beds. The Futurist, at left, sleeps upright in a supposedly vertical bed. he is fully dressed and wears a hat. The passéist, at right, is barely visible beneath his bedcovers. 

It has been suggested that split-screen effects were used in this sequence, as hinted at by the apparently different backgrounds, although at the bottom the blankets carry across this divide uninterrupted. The Futurist was played by Emilio Settimelli with other parts (according to Marinetti) played by Marinetti, Corra and Giulio Spina.


4) "Caricature of Hamlet - Symbol of the Passéist Pessimist". According to Ginna figures moving across the screen were deformed by filming their reflection in concave and convex mirrors. The actors being Settimelli, Venna, Chiti and Nannetti. 

In fact, it appears that this section may have contained the piece described in an article in L'Italia Futurista (01 October 1916) as "Balla falls in love with and marries a chair, a footstool is born." 

At right, in the top photograph, Giacomo Balla is seen kneeling or crouching, arms outstretched, next to a chair. The deformation being caused by the use of distorting mirrors.

The three-picture sequence shows Balla at the right edge of the scene while a girl, apparently added by double exposure technique drifts in and out of the scene (although Ginna mentioned neither double exposure nor the girl). She probably represents the spirit of Balla's beloved chair.

 

      

5) "The Dance of Geometric Splendour". Girls, dressed in costumes made from shaped tinfoil pieces, perform a dynamic-rhythmic dance. Strong lighting directed onto the tinfoil costumes caused numerous luminous flashes to play across the screen thereby destroying the outline of the dancers' bodies.

6) "Poetry Recitation by Remo Chiti". Ginna recalled Chiti reciting poetry "with simultaneous accompaniment of movements of the arms" although the L'Italia Futurista article also mentions poetry readings by Settimelli, Chiti and Ungari. No stills remain of this section.

     

7) " An Introspective Research into States of Mind". Astride wooden supports or trestles in a darkened room Chiti, Venna and Nannetti hold, in a supernatural silence, carrots tied to a thread. (Although this scene may actually be from Ginna's part eight).

According to Ginna the film stock was coloured violet for added atmosphere - although the L'Italia Futurista articles don't mention this. It has been suggested (Kirby) that the still photograph of Remo Chiti with bandaged head is from this "states of mind" scene although it is quite possible it is from the censored scene where Chiti plays the part of Death.

8) "Drama of Objects". L'Italia Futurista mentions the "exploration of herrings, of carrots, and of eggplants" as well as "a discussion between a foot, a hammer and an umbrella". Balla apparently exhibited some objects of colourful wood and neckties made of wood.

When Ginna described Vita Futurista it was nearly fifty years after the event and there are at least two scenes he didn't recall that are known from other sources - including still prints from the film - see "Morning Gymnastics" and the "Futurist Walk" described below. Marinetti's account of the film's segments varies quite markedly from the above - to the extent that it often sounds like the description of a completely different film! Marinetti's account (mostly from L'Italia Futurista articles) is as follows :-

1) "Projection of the principal innovative affirmations of the Manifesto of Futurist Cinema".

2) "Presentation of the Futurists Marinetti, Settimelli, Corra, Chiti, Balla and Ginna". Could this be Ginna's section 2 above? - it's more likely that it equates to Ginna's section 6 "Poetry Recitation by Remo Chiti". 

3) "Futurist Life: How a Futurist Sleeps". This clearly ties in with Ginna's account of section 3.

4) "Morning Gymnastics", allegedly to "liberate oneself from logic", which included a fencing match between Remo Chiti and Marinetti, "A Discussion on Boxing Gloves Between Marinetti and Ungari" (photo at right). This was not mentioned by Ginna at all.

      

According to Marinetti this section also included a "Futurist Breakfast. Intervention of Symbolic Old Men" - is this Marinetti's version of Ginna's "Futurist Lunch" of 1 above?

5) "Searches for Inspiration - Drama of Objects". This is the same as Ginna's section 8 (ie herrings, carrots and aubergines, as well as the foot, hammer, umbrella discussion) but, additionally, includes the Futurist declamations by Settimelli, Chiti and Ungari listed by Ginna as his section 6 and the "Dance of Mechanical Splendour" of Ginna's section 5.

6) "How the Futurist Walks" where Marinetti walked through a hedge, scornful of every obstacle, and was seen to exit from a bush of thorns. According to Marinetti the sequence also included a "Caricature of the Neutralist Walk" interpreted by Marinetti and Balla, the "Interventionist Walk" by Marinetti, the "Creditor's Walk" by Balla, the "Debtor's Walk" by Settimelli and the "Futurist March" demonstrated by Marinetti, Settimelli, Balla and Chiti. Again, this section was not mentioned by Ginna.

7) "Futurist Tea Party"; "Invasion of a Passéist Tea Party" and "Conquest of the Women" during which Marinetti declaimed poetry to their enthusiasm.

8) "Futurist Work" including paintings ideally and outwardly deformed (by distorting mirrors?) and also includes the section "Balla falls in Love with a Chair and a Footstool is Born".

Finally, a sequence of some 190 metres entitled "Why Cecco Beppe Does Not Die" (also known as "Why Francesco Giuseppe Did Not Die") was deleted by the Ministry of the Interior censor because of its satirical anti-Austrian, interventionist stance. L'Italia futurista described the sequence as a "ferocious caricature". The scene featured Remo Chiti as Death, dressed in a black costume on which had been painted a skeleton in white paint. Filmed against a black background, the 'skeleton' appeared to move. The plot of the scene was that Death came for Cecco Beppe, but, because Beppe smelt so vile, Death collapsed and Beppe lived on.

In the manifesto The Futurist Cinema of 1916, FT Marinetti, Bruno Corra and Arnaldo Ginna, together with Emilio Settimelli, Giacomo Balla and Remo Chiti (again, Bragaglia was not invited to sign the manifesto) rejected contemporary concepts of the cinema as a form of theatre without words, hailing it as "a new art, immensely vaster and more agile than all others existing" and the perfect medium for 'polyexpressiveness' which was seen as the ultimate goal of modern art. They declared cinema could be the most dynamic of human expressions because of its ability to synthesize all of the traditional arts, unleashing a form that was totally new. The Futurist cinema would free words from the fixed pages of the book and "smash the boundaries of literature" while it would enable painting to "break out of the limits of the frame." Futurist Cinema was described as "painting + sculpture + plastic dynamism + words-in-freedom + intoned noise + architecture + synthetic theatre" where the idea was to "project two or three different visual episodes at the same time, one next to the other”. It should be noted that this manifesto, unlike most other Futurist manifestos, came after the film had been made so that the manifesto didn't have to make claims that then had to be put into practice.

Having made their film and written their manifesto it would appear that the Futurists then all but dropped the cinema as an expressive art form. Carlo (Anton, Arturo and Alberto's little brother) Bragaglia went on to become a film director and one surviving scene from his film "Your Money or Your Life" made in 1933 recalls the days of Futurist film experimentation. The scene is a dream sequence and is attributed to Enrico Prampolini and the simple scenography is in his para-Surrealist style derived from machine-inspired art of the 1920's. The sequence lasts just over a minute. A series of ten stills from the sequence (again, you won't find these in any books!) are shown at right.

Sequence - man and woman stand by three black, flat monolithic shapes. She, to the man's amazement, draws a small door on one of the black shapes with white chalk. She then opens the door, reaches inside and pulls out a large banknote. She then magically makes more banknotes fly from the opening. (The camera then changes angle and the film is reversed) the money floats back into the opening. They are then chased by a crowd of men. Seen from above, they stand together as the running men surround them while continuing to run on the spot and shouting in unison "raa raa raa" while raising their arms in the air. The couple run off while the men run round in circles, then follow them. End.

It has been claimed that the influence of the Futurist cinema was non-existent, that their few films were infrequently shown and then only to small audiences and that they should not be classed as avant-garde. It is true that, even at this early stage in cinema history, the use of colour, distorting mirrors, and so on were not new. Further, without seeing the films we cannot tell if any scenes were completely abstract. As all but one of the films are now lost, it is difficult to evaluate their worth based on a few stills and vague and contradictory memories - however the Futurist Cinema manifesto does give us a clearer understanding of how the cinema fitted into the ethos of Futurism. Yet there was obvious experimentation and investigation into, and use of, relatively new cinematic techniques. With Vita futurista, despite all the vagaries surrounding it, this creative experimentation when combined with its unexplained structure of unrelated scenes, its lack of narrative and the general abstract 'art for art's sake' approach to its production must make Vita futurista one of the earliest avant-garde films.

In 1926 Marinetti published a manifesto entitled Abstract Cinema Is an Italian Invention - it's difficult to argue the point.